Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Georgia racing and training

Had an amazing race weekend here in Rome Georgia. I was very happy with my performance in all of the races. Did a time trial in the morning and a crit in the afternoon on Saturday and then a road race on Sunday.

The course for the time trial was prefect for me. Not too flat not too rolly but lots of turn around points though. The course was 7 miles long which equals out to approximately 11km. I felt pretty strong throughout the race. I was happy with my time for this early in the season but I got to the time trial race a little later than what I wanted but nonetheless everything turned out ok for that race.

The crit was in downtown Rome was very cool and even better to be able to race with the cat 5 guys. Lots of challenging parts of the race and lots of learning experience gained from this race. The course was a rectangle with a steep little raiser on the back straight away. My legs in the end didn't like that little raiser with a miss shift on the second or third last lap so the field got away from me which I was sad to see but I tried my best to get back up to them no quitting for me. The announcer was doing a good job in encouraging me in those final laps also with a call out on pretty much every lap "Shelly you have 5 more laps to go get back on there". Thanks Bruce

Now for the road race on Sunday. Once again all of the women were racing with the cat 5 guys. The course was 55 miles long or 88.5kms and 2 climbs up Horn mountain which is a 4km long climb. First time around the loop the pace was pretty moderate which was good for me because I was not feeling the best and on my "A" game. The group hit the first time up Horn pretty hard but I was able to get into my own rhythm and was able to pass a lot of people on the climb which I was pretty surprised about. Now I was at the top of Horn and was able to descend with nobody around which I was very happy about because of the technical quality of the descent. I saw a guy in front me on the descent and I figured I needed to make it up to him to give myself any chance to stay in the game. On the second lap I was starting to feel much better and took in some gels to help me a long which boosted my energy. I was able to get in with 6 other people and we all started working together to get ourselves back to the bottom of the main climb. On our way to the mountain we were able to pick up a couple more guys into the group which helped our battle with the headwind on 136 gradual up hill and down hill. The group stayed together until the bottom of Horn. The last climb of the race. I made sure and thanked everybody and congratulated everybody on a good job getting us all to last climb. I was able to climb to a first place finish in this race because of this group of guys. I was so thankful for their hard work and I was also happy that I was able to contribute to helping the guys get to the bottom of the climb.

All though the women fields were not very big here in GA, I was thank for the racing experience here in Rome. For myself I was very happy to race with the cat 5 guys for the extra competition.

Now onto the training portion of the training camp.

Recovery ride on monday after the race weekend ending with a great lunch at a local bakery in town.

Just over three hours in the saddle with 2 great climbs today.

More of flatish ride tomorrow and lots of climbing on Thursday...I can't wait. :-)